The purpose of the study was to develop electronic techniques for coll
ecting, processing and evaluating information in experimental isodyne
stress analysis. The original technique involved chemical photography
recording and manual evaluation of the normal and shear isodyne functi
ons and their derivatives, which are proportional to the stress compon
ents. One objective of the reported study was to show that it is feasi
ble to reliably reconstruct isodyne surfaces which contain information
on the internal force intensities and the components of the stress te
nser. It is shown that the new technique satisfies all the theoretical
conditions and constraints imposed by the theory of the analytical an
d optical isodynes, Thus another objective of the reported study was t
o demonstrate that the isodyne stress analysis allows one to obtain re
liable data on the actual three-dimensional stresses in a cost-effecti
ve manner, The procedure developed to date and presented in the paper
is a hybrid electronic-manual procedure, It involves electronic record
ing of the isodyne fields, manual determination of the isodyne orders
in chosen sections, and electronic determination of the indicated and
load-induced isodyne functions and of the isodyne surfaces, It is show
n that the developed techniques are more reliable, accurate and cost-e
fficient than the traditional techniques of photomechanics. Pertinent
data are illustrated by examples presented in Part 2.